Indonesia Pushes Fair Journalist Remuneration at ASEAN Digital Forum

Indonesian Law Minister Supratman Andi Agtas called for fair and transparent sharing of economic value for journalistic works used on digital platforms, opening the ASEAN Forum on the Protection of Journalistic Works in the Copyright Regime in the Digital Era at The Patra Hotel in Bali on Saturday, October 10, 2026. He argued the push is urgent to protect journalists' rights while ensuring the media industry survives the digital transition. Technology must advance, he said, without rendering the value of human work invisible.

Supratman identified automated content aggregation and the wholesale copying of articles without permission as key challenges, though he noted copyright law does not grant exclusive ownership over facts or events. He said the original expression journalists produce, from framing and analysis to photography and news video, requires protection. In his view, digital use of journalistic works should come with respect for applicable rights, adequate transparency and fair remuneration opportunities. He stressed the goal is not to restrict the flow of information but to sustain professional, responsible journalism.

Press Council chairman Komaruddin Hidayat highlighted the economic imbalance between those who create news and the platforms that distribute it. He said digital platforms capture large profits from public attention, data and advertising revenue, while journalists doing investigative fieldwork are not compensated comparably. He described the situation as deeply concerning, arguing that those who investigate reality do not earn a decent share while those who distribute and monetize the work gain a disproportionate slice of economic value.

Komaruddin added that the remuneration issue extends beyond income, directly affecting the ethics and sustainability of journalism as a profession. Without a strong economic footing, he warned, media would struggle to fulfill their public service role and support democracy.

To build a fairer compensation system, Indonesia is pushing three cooperation pillars at the ASEAN level: transparency in how digital platforms and artificial intelligence developers use journalistic works, a fair and proportional remuneration system for news copyright holders, and cross-border data interoperability and rights management so usage between regions can be tracked transparently.

Fifi Aleyda Yahya, Director General of Public Communication and Media at the Ministry of Communication and Digital, pointed to Presidential Regulation No. 32 of 2024 on Publisher Rights and the Copyright Law as key national foundations for addressing the gap, particularly against the instant use of news content through crawling and scraping by AI systems.